What is the benefit of doing service? What does one learn from it? What does one derive from it? Unless one does service he will not give up his individuality as an independent living entity. Service means you have to accept another and then you become dependant on them. Surrender to them, be dependant on them, under their control, you give up your control – you are the servant, they are the master. This independence is what is keeping us from Krsna.

When we want glories for ourself, that is our pratistha. But the desire to establish the pratistha of Krsna, to increase and enhance the fame of Krsna or my guru, that’s really bhakti. “If I get recognition or not, it’s ok. But let him be glorified.”

There is a nice story, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura in his temple where he was staying in Calcutta in 1930, sannyasis and brahmacaris were going out everyday and collecting alms, they were collecting food, grains, not cooked food but grains, kacha, or whatever you call it, bhoga, wheat and flour, oil, ghee, also money and he noticed that in the temple many of the brahmacaris and sannyasis collectors, they were all begging, they were supposed to become humble, but he noticed that a lot of them were actually becoming proud.

The proper relationship between guru and disciple is that the disciple has respect but at the same time, it is respect mixed with loving affection. My guru is the representative of God, he is my teacher. He is teaching me. He is guiding me, but he has affection for me, he has love for me, he has concern for me, and I have affection and love for him also.

(Excerpt from lecture series on Caitanya Caritamrta, Kartika 2006, Part 2, Lecture 12 – ‘Gauranga empowers Nakula Brahmacari I’)

Lord Caitanya is entering into the bodies of different devotees and giving them krsna sakti and with that power of Krsna, they can establish the dharma of Krsna Consciousness. We have seen one little boy, he was born in Germany. He went to school. He went to Grammar school and High School. Then he went to college and then at the young age of eighteen he joined ISKCON.